The Yellow Papers (15 page)

The Cercle Sportif Français was the only club that allowed women – though never more than forty – and a few well-to-do Chinese. This made it one of the most popular in Shanghai, and the city's
crème de la crème
gathered here. But Edward was not impressed by the dramas that were part of the status quo. Since that first trip here nearly eight years ago, his attitude had changed. He blamed Chen Mu's little jade brush-rest for this change.

He'd gone to visit Chen Mu with an arrogance that now shamed him – how proud he'd been of his academic knowledge, his travels outside of Australia, his exploits in Shanghai! He'd thought to impress Chen Mu with his worldliness, his knowledge of stones and techniques, his experience of ‘real life', as he then called his first month in China. And as soon as he'd entered Chen Mu's cottage he'd realised these things would not impress his old friend, but still he'd persisted. Then Chen Mu had given him the brush-rest, as he would to a son, and with it an indication that there were different kinds of knowledge, different kinds of being.

That night, back in his old room at Walpinya Station, Edward had looked at the little brush-rest and felt ashamed – though he had trouble pinpointing what, exactly, he had to be ashamed of. He realised how quickly, how easily he'd adopted the Imperial attitudes of the Shanghailanders – but why not? Shanghai may be an exotic city, but it was also ultra-modern and opportunities abounded. Why not take full advantage of what it offered? He had the education and finances to do so. After all, would Shanghai be so well developed if not for the Westerners? Yet even as he'd thought this, he'd felt uneasy, though he hadn't been able to put into words the reasons for those feelings.

The next time he was in Shanghai, Edward had received a letter from Chen Mu, at the bottom of which was – as always – a quote. This time Chen Mu had chosen from the Analects of Confucius. Edward read:
‘If a student is not eager, I won't teach him; if he is not struggling with the truth, I won't reveal it to him. If I lift up one corner and he can't come back with the other three, I won't do it again.'

Was Chen Mu trying to tell Edward that he was disappointed with him – that he'd hoped Edward would have learned more from his trip? Or was this just a coincidence? He had, after all, given him the brush-rest. But hadn't he also said
‘A symbol of your potential'?
Potential. Not success, not accomplishments. Just
potential
. Had Chen Mu seen through Edward's bravado? Guessed many of the things Edward had
not
said? Was this why he had chosen this quote? The idea that Chen Mu may be disappointed in him was troubling …

From then on, each time he came to Shanghai, Edward spent more time simply wandering the streets and less time in the clubs. He took long walks through the Concessions with no set objective, and through the Old City without a guide, though everyone told him he was gambling with his life. And he detoured from the grand boulevards with their shade trees and skyscrapers into the narrow alleyways jutting off them, where human faeces floated to the river via open drains, and laundry of every colour jutted out of windows on bamboo poles, and he made a point of striking up conversations with the people he met there. And when he wrote to Chen Mu, he described what he had seen and what he had learned. But still there were times when he felt something was missing. That though he now spoke not only Mandarin, but many of the various dialects, and spent many an hour talking with factory workers, rickshaw pullers, beggars and street vendors, labourers and soldiers, he would never be able to touch the heart of this country.

Over the years he'd travelled to places outside Shanghai as well, to Nanking and the Forbidden City in Beiping, where he'd examined the jades and bronzes, and to Soochoo where it was said the most beautiful women in China were to be found. And he'd visited a silk factory in Wushi some time back, where small girls burnt their fingers dipping for cocoons in vats of boiling water, and stood all day in their own urine because they were not allowed a moment to go to the toilet. ‘
When one of these little girls looked up at me and smiled – so shyly that I wondered, for a moment, whether she had, indeed, smiled
,' he wrote to Chen Mu, ‘
I found I could only turn away in pity at their condition, and felt ashamed of myself for doing so
.'

But since the Mukden Incident, then the fall of Beiping, he'd been more cautious. The Shanghailanders may act as if the Sino-Japanese war was of no concern to them, but Edward felt it was all going to blow wide apart very soon. You could feel it in the air, see it in the faces of the hundreds of refugees that swarmed into the city each day.

‘It's too dry. Take it back – I don't want it!'

The sharp voice of a woman at the next table snapped him out of his reverie. The Chinese waiter bowed and took away the plate, and as he passed Edward's table Edward saw the untouched meal – roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and a mountain of vegetables. It snapped him back to the Sydney he'd just left, where jobless men laboured at useless municipal projects, and queued outside hotels waiting for rubbish bins tightly packed with hotel refuse. He'd seen them up-end the contents on a sheet of newspaper and carefully divide amongst themselves the scrapings of mashed potato stained with tea leaves, the fat from corned beef or the chop bones with just a fragment of meat still attached, and the blobs of whipped cream now curdled and permeated with coffee grounds. It occurred to him then that the lives of those men were very similar to that of the Chinese he saw here in the streets every day, and that the more he observed the Shanghailanders, the more he saw them as spoilt children living in a bubble of unearned privilege.

But still he craved their company.

A shrill burst of laughter caught his attention; it could only be Olivia, the wife of his friend Jonathan Springwell, whose fortune lay in cotton.

‘Edward darling! Have you been very bored waiting for us?' Olivia sashayed to his table and offered her cheek for his kiss. Following was Jonathan, accompanied by a Chinese couple dressed in Western style, whom Edward did not know.

‘Sorry we're late, old boy. Ran into a spot of trouble getting here – some rickshaw driver managed to get himself run over. Held up traffic forever, stupid fellow. But we're here now. I asked my friends here to join us – you don't mind, do you? Edward Billings – Ming Xueliang. He's in silk. And his wife Ming Li.'

When drinks and
amuse-gueules
had been served, and the conversation had turned to Victor Sassoon's latest party – a fancy-dress affair whose theme had been to come dressed as if caught when your ship sank – Edward sat back and observed the two women at his table.

Olivia was dressed in the latest Shanghai style – with hair curled and piled on top of her head, she wore a skin-tight high split floor-length cheongsam, much decorated with bright embroidery, and around her shoulders a fur stole with the fox's head still attached. Not for the first time Edward wondered why Western women insisted on wearing the cheongsam – in his opinion their figures were just not right for the garment. As she sipped her Pink Gin and chatted, Olivia's gaze constantly flitted across the room, never resting, and Edward thought she gave off a frenetic aura, as if afraid to stop and listen to her own thoughts.

Ming Li had not chosen the cheongsam. Instead she wore a simple bias-cut, low-backed silk dress. It barely skimmed her body yet gave the impression that she was naked beneath it. Her hair was cut short, parted at the side in the deep fingerwaves that were currently the fashion, with three little kisscurls above a pencilled eyebrow. Over her shoulders she wore an elbow-length, delicately beaded cape. She didn't touch her drink but sat with her hands resting motionless on her lap, her gaze focussed on whoever was speaking. To Edward, she seemed to have woven a cocoon of tranquillity around herself.

‘Stark naked! It's true – the Cathay's never seen anything like it!' Olivia's voice intruded. ‘They came with their hair soaking wet and a shower curtain wrapped around themselves – nothing else. Said they'd been taking a shower when the ship sank. Victor was
so
amused. Oh look, speak of the devil …'

Victor Sassoon was indeed arriving. Elegantly attired, with his trademark monocle and a carnation in his buttonhole, he limped in on the arm of two beautiful women. One was Emily Hahn, the American reporter, with her inseparable pet gibbon, Mr Mills, draped around her shoulders. Mr Mills, as always, was elegantly dressed in a morning suit.

‘They say,' Olivia stage-whispered, ‘that Mr Mills bites any man that approaches her. I wonder how Victor manages …'

Edward caught Ming Li's gaze and smiled. Emily Hahn provided endless gossip for the Shanghailanders, and he knew that Olivia may pretend to be shocked, but in fact relished each titbit that came her way.

‘You should approach him for an apartment, Edward,' Jonathan suggested. ‘It'd have to be better than that thing you're living in.'

‘No thanks.'

‘Well, slumming is all well and good, old boy, but you really should think of your reputation.'

‘Jonathan doesn't approve of my accommodation,' Edward explained to Xueliang and his wife. He was living in an area near the Avenue Joffre, known locally as ‘Little Russia' because of the many White Russian refugees who had settled there and opened shops and businesses, but there were also many Chinese, French, Germans and British living there – hardly a slum area in Edward's opinion.

‘You're living like a Chinaman,' Olivia quipped, referring to the fact that his residence was in a Chinese complex, ‘but if that's what you want …' She turned towards the orchestra. ‘Listen, Jonathan – they're playing ‘Blue moon'. Dance with me?'

Edward mentally cursed Olivia's thoughtlessness. Xueliang was watching the dancers, his expression restrained. Ming Li sat with her gaze lowered, also expressionless except for the slight flush of her neck. The silence between them grew, but this was not the comfortable silence Edward had experienced with Chen Mu. He knew Xueliang would not be the first to break it.

‘I bought a
Shikumen
house in a laneway just off the Avenue Joffre,' he said at last, ‘Two storeys. Nice. I'm here so often it seemed the easiest thing to do. My amah looks after it when I'm away. It helps both of us …'

‘A wise decision,' Xueliang conceded. ‘Property is always a good investment.'

Ming Li smiled. The tension eased.

‘Your friend tells me you're interested in our artefacts?'

‘Some …'

‘Are you interested in a particular dynasty?'

‘Not really, not at this stage …'

‘I know of something that may interest you. My uncle has —'

‘Edward, dance with me! Jonathan refuses to move another step. He's becoming an old man!'

Edward rose, even though still annoyed with Olivia, but he knew better than to refuse her.

From the dance floor Edward watched Ming Li. Though he liked her calm composure, he felt an underlying intensity. The music stopped then started again with Fats Waller's ‘Honeysuckle Rose'. As he led Olivia around the dance floor his gaze returned to their table.

‘You haven't got a chance you know, Edward darling.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Li. You haven't got a chance.'

‘I don't—'

‘Oh come on, Edward! This is me, remember? I'm not blind. You can't keep your eyes off her for more than a minute.'

‘She's intriguing …'

Olivia laughed. ‘Is that what you call it? Come on Edward, don't be so pompous! Be honest – she's gorgeous; even I can see that. And she doesn't say much, which
you
, being a man, will probably interpret as being mysterious.'

Edward laughed. ‘Am I really so very transparent? No, don't answer that. So tell me, what do you know about her?'

‘Not much, I'm afraid. I only know her through Jonathan. He and Xueliang are working on some business deal together – a mill he's interested in. So I see her now and then, but she doesn't open up much. Something of a traditional marriage, I suspect – she's so much younger than Xueliang. I know they have a daughter called MeiMei. Eight? Nine? Something like that. Cute little thing.'

‘Anything else?'

‘No, not really. Oh, she did say she went to a mission school as a girl, which would explain how she speaks English so well … Oh bother! Jonathan's signalling. I think he wants to go. Will we see you for dinner tonight?'

Edward entered the small antique shop in Soochow Road – Shanghai's foreign red light district. The owner had contacted him about some mandarin seals of office. Nestled between two bordellos, outside which Russian whores congregated, the shop smelt of moist dust and incense.

‘This one belonged to the mandarin of Kiangsi Province, and this to the mandarin of the Yunnan Province,' the small Chinese man explained.